


Liberty and Libertines

by AMarguerite



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-17 10:35:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5866135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bahorel meets Fantine in 1816 and is conscious of two things: how much better it would be if Fantine was his mistress, and how much Tholomyès needs to be punched. Things change dramatically as a result.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PilferingApples](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PilferingApples/gifts).



The Greeks believed that love came suddenly, as quickly as an arrow loosed from a bow. A single look and then one knew. One felt that arrow shaft to the heart, sending sweet poison coursing through one’s veins, sending fantasies of kisses and embraces tenderly to the mind’s eye.

Bahorel believed that hate operated much the same way.

For, nearly upon his arrival in Paris, he took one look at Tholomyès, and knew he hated him. A sort of pleasant rage coursed through Bahorel. He was conscious of the overpowering impulse to punch Tholomyès, and to punch him repeatedly. There was no more satisfying fantasy than that of his fist meeting Tholomyès’s nose. During the interminable dinner in which he was forced to listen to Tholoymnes’s hypocritic advice, his thin, hand-me-down jests, his smug posturing, the certainty only grew.

  
Bahorel would punch this man in the face or be forever unsatisfied.

The only trick now was to provoke a quarrel.

Not a hard trick, he mused, as Tholomyès and his three slightly less irritating friends teased some grisettes at a nearby table. Bahorel was a Gascon. A Gascon could pick a quarrel with anyone or anything. It was a point of regional pride.

Bahorel’s actual friend, a hearty Gascon named Guyot, leaned over and whispered, “If this is what the law school does to a fellow, kill me before the contagion seizes total control.”

“With pleasure,” replied Bahorel.

Guyot grimaced. “I begin to doubt in friend Montpenser, if these fellows are his idea of good company.”

But then Montpenser came striding in with three girls-- cloaked, but with their hoods pushed back, so that all might regard their pretty faces and the artful arrangement of their curls, “Tholomyès, these nymphs claim to know you!”

“Ha!” said Bahorel, settling comfortably in his corner, and folding his hands over his waistcoat. “That is Montpenser’s idea of good company.”

“Perhaps I have been too hasty, condemning Montpenser,” said Guyot.

The grisettes surrounding Montpenser shed cloaks as butterflies might a chrysalis, emerging in clouds of pastel gauzes, fluttering cheap ribbon, and second hand silks. They were proclaimed to have the unlikely names of Favourite, Zéphine, Dahlia, and Fantine. Bahorel thought that they had all probably started out in life plain Jeannes or Maries, and mentally applauded their ingenuity.

Bahorel and Guyot stood politely, and allowed Tholomyès to drunkenly introduce them. Favourite laughed at him and, with an air of command which Bahorel assumed meant she was Tholomyès’s lover, said, “You have celebrated too much without us! Men without women grow uncivilized so quickly! Make room for us.”

But, to Bahorel’s surprise, Tholomyès ceded his chair to the youngest of the set, a quiet, enchantingly lovely blonde, who looked as pale and diaphanous as her muslin. She had not dressed warmly enough for the weather, and looked a little sickly as a result, but that was the fashion, Bahorel supposed. His mother and sisters were forever exploding into arguments over muslins when it snowed. The grisette at least filled out well the low neckline of her gown, and her pallor was fashionable.

Guyot leaned over to Bahorel and said, “Mysteries of Paris! How could such an ugly old brute as Tholomyès have such a pretty little thing for a mistress?”

Bahorel rubbed his forefinger and thumb together under the table, where only Guyot could see it, but then thought better of it. “Though she hasn’t the air for it. Perhaps the Greeks were right and Cupid shoots blindly. Aphrodite was married to Hephestus, after all. The blonde might love him.”

“What is there to love?” asked Guyot, incredulously.

Aside from a bold taste in trousers, there was nothing distinctive about Tholomyès. Everything about Tholomyès seemed borrowed from someone else. The outward form was even beginning to match the inward poverty: his head was becoming as bald as his jokes.

Bahorel scratched what he’d hoped would become the beginning of a beard (so far it was stubble so patchy he had to shave, or look as if he’d caught the mange).

Listoller was embracing one of the girls who was not Favourite and said, “Fantine, how well you look! You were sick for some time.”

“Nine months,” said one of the girls, snidely. “To begin with, that is. It takes a year to gain one’s figure back.”

Guyot was speechless with bewilderment.

“ _Amour caecus est_ ,” said Bahorel, shaking his head. This new shade of Tholomyès’s portrait didn’t surprise him. Tholomyès would be careless enough, or boastful enough, or simply stupid enough to get his mistress with child.

Fantine blushed rosily (and prettily), and looked distraught at all the questions lobbed at her. Tholomyès looked impressed with himself at first, then exasperated, then said, “Bah, all this interest in a little mewling girl that Fantine, the silly creature, took into her head to try and name ‘Happiness.’ Euphrasie is the unhappy result. But let Bacchus make us truly merry!”

He signaled to the waiter, and the party indeed grew merry. Fantine still looked embarrassed-- almost humiliated even, as she looked down into her lap and smoothed the ribbon of her waistline down with the tip of her forefinger.

Partly out of pity, partly out of a desire to irritate Tholomyès, Bahorel set out to make himself agreeable to Fantine.

She started at his simple, “A fine sentiment.”

“Ah-- oh?” she asked, looking as if he had roused her out of sleep.

“Wishing your child to be forever happy,” said Bahorel. “An admirable wish.”

Fantine dimpled. At rest she was pretty. Smiling, she was dazzling. Bahorel almost missed her soft, “Thank you, Monsieur.”

“I miss children,” said Bahorel, when he was master of himself once again. “I come from Gascony-- we have large families in Gascony.”

Fantine was not entirely willing to be drawn into conversation, but she managed a soft, “Oh?” and Bahorel blundered onward. She smiled when he talked of his young cousins and sisters, and laughed, even, when he told her how he’d once jumped into the bull’s pen, and tried to act the Spanish matador, to entertain them all. Fantine had just ventured some tentative remarks about her own child escapades, running wild throughout the streets of some small, northern town Bahorel had never heard of, when Tholomyès at last recalled Fantine existed and grew irritated with her.

“Oh my little flirt,” said Tholomyès, chucking her under the chin, in a way that forced her to turn and look at him. “You give your smiles to any man but me. How dejected I am!”

Bahorel snorted, but Fantine looked stricken and clasped his hand with her own. “Oh Felix-- I never meant it, truly, you know much I love you.”

“She’s never had a lover before,” Bahorel said, when they were all bundled up, and strolling back to their own apartments, “and believes everything Tholomyès says. She’s never heard any of it before.”

Guyot, looking very worldly-wise and self-important, said, “Women aren’t educated properly! All his jokes are stolen from Terence.”

“And all his lines from vaudevilles,” agreed Bahorel.

“I’d like to punch him in the throat,” said Guyot, wistfully. “He hasn’t done anything to me, but still. There’s something about the man that screams ‘I need to be punched.’”

Bahorel agreed, and also said, “And someone should tell him not to ignore beautiful women the way he does. If they are not properly looked after, they do have a tendency to wander.”

Guyot clucked his tongue, though he grinned so widely his face seemed split in half. “Monsieur Bahorel! I am shocked and scandalized!”

“I am a dreadful libertine,” said Bahorel, pleased to be able to say this about himself. He’d always wanted to be able to say he was a libertine.


	2. Chapter 2

Bahorel next saw Fantine at the Temple market, sifting through piles of second-hand gowns lady’s maids had that morning ferried over from the Faubourg St. Germaine. She was talking to an acquaintance that passed as Fantine’s closest friend, because they talked every week, about things that were not work (“Or lovers,” Favourite had once said, before laughing and adding, “though work and lovers go tiresomely hand-in-hand. You drop one and pick up another.”).

Bahorel was ostensibly there to look for a costume to a masquerade ball at the opera house. His conversation with Fantine made him fancy a bullfighter’s outrigging. Red and flashy, with an inference of suicidal courage-- everything that could possibly please a Gascon. He spent an inordinate amount of time wandering from stall to stall. He walked away with several outrageous waistcoats, but not a piece of the costume he’d set out to find. He whistled cheerfully to himself. Ah well, there were three weekends more until the masquerade. He was really being organized and forward thinking, going out this early.

(There was also a law lecture he was missing, but he told himself he had at least one more absence before he was cut out of the class. So he was being  _ very  _ responsible.)

When he saw Fantine, proudly showing off her child, he thought nothing of going over, reminding her of their acquaintance and losing no time in making faces at Cosette. She replied with a toothless smile and a gurgle.

“What a lovely smile,” said Bahorel, crossing his eyes at her.

Cosette drooled appreciatively.

Fantine’s bashfulness vanished when she had Cosette with her. She beamed at Bahorel. “Yes-- she smiled very early. My landlady’s children didn’t smile until they were four months. Cosette smiled after one month. She is a year and a half now and smiles all the time. She rarely cries.”

“She’s such a good girl!” cooed the woman in the stall, wiggling her fingers at Cosette. “My niece Sophie cried all the time at that age. Kept us up all hours of the night!”

And they all chatted of babies and their particularities until Fantine forgot to be shy of Bahorel, and began to even volunteer information about herself. Her story was not dissimilar to others Bahorel had heard: she had been born to no one knew who, raised in the north, with the cobblestone for her bed and the sky for her roof, and had come down to Paris for work. She had met Tholomyès, fallen in love with him at once, and shortly thereafter, presented him with a daughter.

But she was more eager still, to talk of Cosette. Her friends-- the three nymphs of yesterday evening-- had no children and did not particularly care to see Cosette or hear of her. Tholomyès was, in Fantine’s words, “good, for a man.” It did not take a literary scholar to parse her lines and realize that Tholomyès was proud of having got his mistress pregnant, but was a little annoyed that a child had actually resulted from his carelessness. Tholomyès did not care to see Cosette very often, did not ever wish to be seen with her, and did not much care to see Fantine taking care of Cosette, though it was something that filled Fantine's waking hours.

Fantine seemed to think this typical male behavior, and was flattered that Tholomyès did not mind when she occasionally mentioned the existence of their daughter. 

‘I’d love to punch that fellow in the stomach,’ thought Bahorel, wistfully. 

They talked for nearly an hour, before Fantine recalled that she had a little work to still do at home.

“He makes you work, still?” asked Suzanne, the stall keeper.

“Oh no!” exclaimed Fantine, eyes wide. “No, no, he pays for everything, of course. But I like to make Cosette’s clothes myself. She grows so much, and so quickly-- she needs a new gown for Sundays.”

‘Dangerous,’ thought Bahorel, with a first-year-student’s sense of certainty. He had been in Paris scarcely half-a-year and was certain of the lay of the land. From the grisettes he had courted, he knew it was dangerous for a girl to miss too much work or, worse, fail to work at all. He had carried over many a glass of lemonade or wine to a gaggle of grisettes, heads bent together, side curls mingling, whispering to each other, “And she doesn’t work! No, no shirts, not even any mending! You know how  _ that  _ ends.”

Bahorel stared after Fantine and Cosette and turned to Suzanne. “Be frank with me,” said he. “Have I a chance?”

“Hm,” said Suzanne, tapping her chin. “I don’t know. Tholomyès is her first lover. She doesn’t know how to play, as the other grisettes do.” Then with a sly look at Bahorel, “She is pretty, though.”

“Beautiful,” Bahorel agreed, happily. “A dowry of gold, pearls, ivory, and sapphires.”

“Well,” said Suzanne, “if you don’t make her give up the child, and are kind to her, you have a better chance than most. You look like the sort of man she usually shrinks from, but she’s not afraid of you. That’s a start.” 

Bahorel made a point thereafter, of passing by the same stall whenever his business called him by the Temple, and often when it didn’t. It pleased him unutterably that after about a week of this, Fantine began showing up at the stall at odd hours, too. She did appear to have done so consciously, or to have thought much beyond, "Here is someone who takes as much joy in my child as I do," which Bahorel found strangely flattering. He had always gotten along well with children, and Cosette was at the stage when she was very nearly human. She made noises and gibbered, and tried to interact with the world. True, this mostly involved stuffing things into her mouth, but she  _was_ trying.

Fantine was unsell-conscious and charming. She clearly thought that Bahorel came by because he was fond of children, and (equally clearly) thought him odd for it, but in such a way that this oddity meant he couldn't possibly be fearsome, or in any way a threat. For the first two weeks they did not manage to talk about much more than Cosette, or their mutual friends, or the sort of vague pleasantries that helps establish the character of another person.  

Bahorel made sure to go slowly, to keep everything to a roguish friendliness. at his most daring, he offered a satirical aside or a sharp observation about a mutual acquaintance, in order to see Fantine blush, or be startled into a laugh. Though she would never think or vocalize unpleasant thoughts, she seemed it enjoy it, or at least enjoy the sensation of being pleasantly scandalized, when Bahorel did.

For lack of other comparisons or experiences he told himself, “One takes one’s time with a badly treated horse.” He was careful, he was cautious, and with every conversation he found that he liked Fantine more. She was poorly educated, but she felt as she ought on all serious things. She could not read, but loved hearing novels read aloud, and seeing plays performed. She tried, fumblingly to explain a book she had liked with a heroine named V something, with very pretty discussions of nature. “For I have only seen good in nature,” Fantine said, shyly, to the top of Cosette’s head, “and... there are many people who are good and kind in society, but some are not. You see men beating horses, not-- not the other way.”

“Ah,” said Bahorel, “I think you mean  _ Paul et Virginie,  _ and I am glad to find you devote of Rousseau!”

Fantine did not know who Rousseau was, or what he had said or written, but when it was explained, she smiled and said, happily, “Oh yes! I think he puts things very cleverly.”

Bahorel was smitten.

With a little wheedling and goading, she could be persuaded to form opinions on many of the feelings that went constantly and consistently unexpressed. She liked it a great deal when Bahorel simplified political and philosophical ideas for her-- Fantine was not unintelligent. Her philosophy was pragmatic. If Bahorel could but explain the natural frontier theory using commonplace disputes and quarrels, Fantine would look down at Cosette, think on it, and then look up at him, brow clearing and say, “Oh! I see, it’s like--” and then give an example of how in the Temple the furniture dealer and the clothing dealers were divided by such-and-such a street, and always argued over the proper boundary. 

She even stopped apologizing for not knowing who Voltaire was, aside from someone who had written a play she’d once seen. 

Guyot came upon them once, and then walked on with Bahorel to a lecture. “There are other grisettes in Paris,” he said, sticking his hands in his pockets. “Ones  _ without  _ other men’s children. Surely you don’t care to be gulled into supporting--”

“I’m not being gulled into anything,” said Bahorel, scowling. “I like Fantine.” And then he made one of the noises in Gascony that was both an invitation to quarrel and a way to end it.

“Well,” said Guyot, “you’ll certainly get into a fight with Tholomyès now.”

“Nothing you are saying is dissuading me,” said Bahorel.

Guyot laughed. “If it comes to it, I’ll be your second.”

“No need,” said Bahorel, grinning. “I only duel with men of honor.”

“Punch him in the throat for me,” said Guyot. 

When it came to it, there was only a minor scuffle. Tholomyès, after depositing Fantine with Favourite and some of the other gristtes, swaggered up to Bahorel at the masquerade. Tholomyès said, after making sure his idiot friends were behind him, pointed at Bahorel. “Come now farm boy, we don't stand for this kind of thing in Paris. A man's mistress is sacrosanct as his family lands. Sow your oats somewhere else.”

“Come now, you bull-headed idiot,” said Bahorel, theatrically swinging off his cape. “Fight like the dull beast you are.” He waggled the cape suggestively. “Ole!” 

Tholomyès’s lip twitched. Bahorel grinned. He knew he looked particularly broad-shouldered in his matador’s coat. 

“Stop bothering my mistress,” Tholomyès said, and flounced off. Tholomyès punished Fantine for it, which Bahorel felt bad about not expecting. 

Tholomyès started his campaign against her with a suddenness that made Fantine lapse into a confused silence. She had been lively enough before, talking to Favourite about some outing they had gone on to Saint-Cloud, and about a spangled muslin she was hoping to do over, but as soon as he returned, he looked coldly away and asked Favourite to dance. 

"Felix--" Fantine said, tenatively.

"Oh you are dull this evening," Tholomyès interrupted, with a glare. "I hate these stupid recriminations and jealousies of yours. I am only complimenting your good friend, Favourite. I had thought you were different."

"I was-- I am," stammered Fantine. "I am sorry for being so stupid, Felix."

Tholomyès sighed. "It's a lucky thing I'm such a patient man. Most wouldn't stand for this behavior. Come, Favourite-- would you care to waltz?"

Favourite looked vaguely concerned, but, as Fantine was near tears, seemed to think it best to leave Fantine alone for the time being. She accepted the invitation. The group scatted, leaving Fantine alone  in a corner of the room, perched like a bird about to take flight on the edge of her chair, and looking forlorn and out of place.

“Fantine,” said Bahorel, wandering over to her, with two glasses of champagne. “I’m glad to see you! I don’t suppose you brought Cosette.”

“Oh no,” said Fantine, turning to him gratefully. “Suzanne offered to watch her this evening. She has no man at present, and said she should like not sharing a room with her sister and her niece for an evening, so she sleeps in my bed this evening, with Cosette. Cosette is a good girl, she sleeps the evening through.” 

They talked a little of Cosette, and then of this and that and everything under the sun, Fantine pausing and looking hopefully at Tholomyès at the end of every song.

“Never mind him,” said Bahorel, a little gruffly. "He's a petty tyrant. Throw him over. We're in France, hey? We don't allow men to remain in power if they derelict their duties."

Fantine smiled uncertainly. "Oh, you didn't hear the argument. Felix isn't tyrannical. It's just... we women tend to be more jealous and all. Men dislike it. As is natural."

"I hardly believe that," said Bahorel. "I don't think one can fairly generalize about the whole of one sex. I believe in taking an individual on a case by case basis. You, I think, are hardly the jealous sort. You rightly dislike being neglected. That is not jealousy. If it were jealousy, you'd be scheming against Favourite, and I don't think that's something that ever crossed your mind."

"Oh no," said Fantine, very wide-eyed. "Because-- because it's my fault, you see, no one else's."

"I think your natural modesty is somewhat clouding your judgment of events," said Bahorel. "It is very uncommon for any man to neglect his mistress, when he has brought her to a party. If you had been my mistress, I would scarce be able to go out in company, unless I had you smiling beside me. I would find any party without you to be a horribly dull affair. What on earth would I do, if I couldn't say outrageous things about the company, and see your blushes? I would probably drink myself into a stupor, and be annoyed the next day. Tomorrow I know I shall be all smiles, because I got to spend an evening conversing with you."

“You’re-- you’re very good to me,” said Fantine, in a faltering voice. “To keep company with me. I am-- I must be very dull. Tholomyès does not care to--” Then, defensively, “He is very learned. I have only lately realized how little I know. He must love me a great deal to spend time with me when I am so ignorant.”

“Oh, you are hardly ignorant!” protested Bahorel. “Tholomyès is just an idiot.”

Fantine looked scandalized.

‘Too fast,’ thought Bahorel.

“That is-- he is for failing to realize he could be dancing with the most beautiful woman in the room, and have a lovely conversation with her at the same time. I am a far cleverer man. I have at least got your conversation. Perhaps, if I am very lucky, or you are very kind, I will have the pleasure of dancing with you as well as conversing with you?”

Fantine looked at Tholomyès, waltzing with Favourite, and suddenly set her jaw. She looked adorable. “Yes I  _ will _ . I will dance with you.”

And she danced with no one else that evening.


End file.
